Non vvc head gasket on vvc engine?

[JOHNDQ]

I believe Power Train developed the gasket before they want burst but wasn't in time to be put on any engines from the factory. In fairness this alone wouldnt have been enough to sort the engine problems anyway and because of Rovers complete miss handling of the problems people had already lost faith in the product

[Evil C]

The MLS gasket with the separate shim is sometimes referred to as the 'Land Rover gasket', because it first became available as a Land Rover uprated repair part in early 2006, and then through XPart for MG and Rover owners later in the year. It was developed at MG Rover/Powertrain in conjunction with Goetze (I think, but stand to be corrected) and development was not quite completed when MG Rover collapsed into administration in April 2005. Development was completed at Powertrain by the MG Rover engineers under the direction of the administrators, and the stories at the time indicated that it was completed at the insistance of Land Rover and that they may have paid for the completion work.

The shim isn't really a 'head saver' in the normal sense. A head saver shim is usually thicker and designed to replace material removed when a substantial skim is necessary - there is usually very little that can be safely skimmed from the K series head without taking it below the minimum head casting measurement of 118.75mm (a new head would measure between 118.95mm and 119.2mm, and Rover quoted a maximum skim of 0.2mm; beyond this and a proper Gosnays type head saver shim is needed to build the head thickness up).

Much has been written and said about the K, and I am afraid that there is a good deal that you will read on some forums and especially on Facebook, which is either inaccurate or just plain wrong, but it does seem that the 1995-on damp liner engines suffer from poor coolant flow up the front/exhaust side of the block, and that in some cases the coolant may enter the head on the exhaust side having already absorbed its full capacity of heat, therefore not able to cool the exhaust side of the head sufficiently. This can lead to annealing/softening of the head face on that side, and leads to the fire rings digging into the head, which in turn reduces the clamping force and allows coolant under pressure to leak past it into the cylinder. The shim with the MLS is designed to spread the clamping load over a wider area and help alleviate fire ring indentation.

A good read about the problems of the K and the changes that were made can be had if you come across 'The Rover K Series 16 Valve Engine' by Des Hamill (but there are some inaccuracies and sweeping assumptions even in that book).

I don't really know what to make of your problem, but clearly there is something amiss with the compression on No1 cylinder - you can try retightening the bolts and see what happens. Another possibility is that there may be a more serious fault than the gasket - a crack in the head or block castings, or a cracked liner perhaps, but all of these things are very rare on the K series.

[Spadge]

Thank you for the above info, it's quite a history this engine series has had. Even a bit of pride seeping out that it's an engine with a real problem to tolerate not just a daft electrical/sensor fault ?.

So, more extensive tests done. Still a steamy exhaust. Compression test on all cylinders shows reading between 220psi and 240 psi, all happy there. All plugs are dry. Whipped rocker cover off to find the emulsified oil was just around the rocker cap ( so I cleaned it off), the sump oil is a tad pale but only to the extent that it's a dark green colour (was black-changing it soon!). So I'm uncertain if the water in the oil was:
- only condensation.
- extremely minor head seal weep internally.
Or;
- from when I split the head it could have got a few drops in the oil at that point.

The steamy exhaust however...
Still has a rough idle unless held at 2000rpm then it settles back steady.
I did a fuel filter change and what was coming out looked to have a slight pink hue/discolouration to it, thought nothing of it at the time. However, when I first bought the car (02/02/18) it idled and powered through all revs to 4000rpm fine ( didn't take it above 4K as unknown history) it was 2 days after use that the missfire/rough idle started. Of course when I bought it had to nurse it to the nearest petrol station as it was running of fumes and filled up with premium fuel. Could it have sucked some crud up out the bottom of the tank and clogged an injector? Or, considering the pink discolouration, got a slug of water when I filled up?

Between filling up and rough idle being identified was about 20 - 30 miles. No fault code on the car at present. Think I'll drain the fuel tank anyway just to rule it out.

Any other ideas?
I'd like to hear them if you do!
Thanks in advance.

[Spadge]

Just to seal the thread up for anyone else's benefit. The steam cleared after a tank of two of fuel and some wynns fuel treatment, head gasket still running fine after 1k+ miles. The weird idle turned out to be the heater circuit on the lambda sensor, error code finally showed up! But just recently developed an idle surge which I'm working on but I'll leave that for another time.